The Thing About Fate
by ashenrenee
Summary: It was a bloody fucking Christmas miracle, and he wondered if maybe fate was finally done fucking him over. **Winner for Most Creative Backstory of the Quills and Parchment Under the Mistletoe One-Shot Competition 2016**


**Hello loves! This is the one-shot I wrote for the Quills and Parchment Under the Mistletoe Competition! The prompt for this story was as follows:**

 **His five-year-sentence had hit Scabior hard, getting back on his feet afterwards with no family or friends to rely on was nearly impossible, so he gave up. But Christmas is just around the corner and a certain curly-haired witch he used to be obsessed with is helping out in the muggle homeless-shelter he had been hiding in. Maybe there is a Christmas miracle in store for Scabior?**

 **This fic was the winner for Most Creative Backstory**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, this is JK Rowling's sandbox, I'm just building castles.**

 **I'd like to thank Heeley for being my beta and my Scabior dialogue expert on this! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!**

 **Thank you for reading and please remember to feed the magical review eating fairy!**

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 _Everything happens for a reason_ , his mother had told him once, when he was a very small child. Fate, she had called it. Bullshit was more like it, in his opinion. He'd never put much stock in the idea of fate, if a shitty childhood in an abusive home with an alcoholic father hadn't discouraged the idea then five years in Azkaban certainly had.

Scabior had realized a long time ago that it was fate's desire to be as cruel to him as possible. His mother had died the day after Christmas when he was just six years old and his father had taken it upon himself to beat him everyday afterwards until he'd finally run away at the age of fifteen.

He'd dropped out of Hogwarts, and used his weak, self taught, wandless magic to transfigure himself a place to live in the hollow of a tree trunk. Then he'd worked hard, every fucking day, to make a name for himself as the best damn tracker in the wizarding world.

Unfortunately he'd chosen the wrong side during the war, and used his perfectly honed skills as a Snatcher for Voldemort, earning himself a ticket to Azkaban for five Merlin forsaken years, followed by five years parole – the first of which was to be served without magic.

The wizarding world, upon his release, had made it clear that he was no longer welcome there. No one would hire him, not wanting their businesses to be tainted by anyone they considered to be no better than a Death Eater. He had no friends, having always been an anti-social person, and, well, he'd slit his own throat before going back to his father. Scabior was, for lack of a better phrase, all alone in the world, and it was impossible to get back on his feet again.

So he'd given up. He figured that it was only a matter of time before fate caught up to him again and dealt him yet another shit hand, he might as well lie down and take it like a man. Life, fickle as it was, had guided him to a muggle homeless-shelter, where he'd been hiding for the past two months, and that was where fate found him in the form of the one and only Hermione fucking Granger.

He recognized her immediately, how could he not when her riotous curls, and pert, freckled nose, and wide brown eyes had haunted his dreams from the first moment he'd ever laid eyes on her? She was beauty and grace and perfection personified, Aphrodite in the flesh, and he'd be damned if he said he wasn't obsessed with her.

He'd nearly bit his tongue off when he saw her walk through the door of the homeless-shelter for the first time, two weeks before Christmas with her hair pulled back into a barely contained bun and a name tag on her decidedly hideous Christmas sweater declaring her a volunteer. His breath had caught in his chest when she made eye contact with him and a smile, a fucking _smile_ , graced her pretty face.

He was surprised when the sight of that smile made him angry. Who was she to smile at him? To walk into his perfect hiding place and invade his space with her lemongrass and mint scent and smile at him like he was an old friend instead of someone she'd helped send to Azkaban? What made her think she had the right? It was like she was laughing at him, laughing at him because he had to live in this muggle hell surrounded by people who could never hope to understand how much _harder_ it was for him to be homeless than it was for them – at least they didn't have knowledge of magic and how much easier it could make their lives.

He had no idea what made him do it, but one second he'd been sitting at his table and the next he was crossing the room and stepping into her personal space, a teasing smile creeping onto his face.

"'Ello beau'iful," he drawled.

"Scabior," she greeted him, her cool tone contradicting the warm smile on her face. "I'm surprised to see you here, I would have thought a muggle establishment like this was beneath you."

Scabior laughed, he couldn't help himself, because honestly she had no idea.

"Now, why would yer think somethin' like that, dove?" he asked, leaning in closer to her, so that they were almost touching. Her smile faltered slightly as she quirked a brow at him, as if it should be obvious why she would think that. "It was about money dove, not prejudice." It was, of course, a lie. At the time it had been about prejudice. It had been about hatred and and anger and all the things he felt for his filthy muggle father. But she didn't need to know that.

"I don't believe that for a second," she told him. He arched a brow at her.

"Yer can believe what yer like, love," he said, shrugging. "But yer wrong." She stared at him speculatively for a moment.

"Say I believe you," she said, tilting her head back to meet his eyes. "Not that I do, but for arguments sake let's pretend that I did, would you be interested in being friends?" He narrowed his eyes at her, suspicion running through him like wildfire.

"Yer up ter somethin' dove, what is it?" he asked. She wrinkled her nose at him, obviously put out that he found her so transparent.

"Nothing," she answered. "I have no idea what you're talking about." She turned and walked away from him.

He thought that that would be the end of it, that he'd managed to ruin it somehow by asking the wrong question, but she kept coming back to the shelter. She would come every day and she would make food and sort through donations and she would come talk to him.

The first week was hard, full of heavy sarcasm and snark and the occasional urge to throttle her for her never ending insults to his character. But then he found her crying in the pantry one night as she sorted through a box of canned goods and he stood in the doorway filled to the brim with morbid curiosity as he counted the tears that ran down her cheeks.

When she caught him staring he didn't look away, but he also made a point of not asking what was wrong, it wouldn't do for her to think that he cared. But he did. He _cared_ , and it made him sick to his stomach because, _why the fuck did he care?_

"You probably think that this is what I deserve," she murmured. "The filthy little mudblood all alone and crying her eyes out on Christmas Eve. Maybe she's so sad she'll finally off herself and there will be one less mudblood to taint the world with her dirty blood." She laughed, and it was such a bitter sound that it made his heart ache.

"Why don't yer tell me what's wrong, dove?" he asked, fighting the strange urge he felt to wrap his arms around her. He'd never wanted to hold anyone before, had never felt the need to comfort anyone before. It was alien and weird and he didn't like it.

"I volunteer here every Christmas," she said, looking him directly in the eyes. "My parents used to bring me here to volunteer when I was a child." There was a profound sadness in her eyes, one that he recognized immediately. It was the same look he'd seen in the mirror for years after his mother had died and left him all alone in a house in the world. "I obliviated them," she admitted. "I thought that I could undo it when the war was over but when I went to Australia to find them-" She took a deep breath and looked away from him.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, surprised to find that he meant it. Her shoulders began to shake and he gave into his desire to hold her, to comfort her. He closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against him as she sobbed into his shoulder.

They stayed there for a while, although how long it was he couldn't say, and he felt a strange _something_ bubbling up inside him the longer he held her. He'd been obsessed with her for years, had imagined himself touching her – though the kind of touching he'd had in mind was quite different from what they were currently doing.

"My parents were muggles," he whispered into her hair. "My mother was a nurse in an old people's 'ome, an' my father was a lousy drunk. The day after Christmas when I was six years old I watched 'im beat 'er ter death in a drunken fit of rage when 'is steak wasn't cooked the way 'e wanted it." He wasn't sure why he was telling her, he'd never told anyone before. Not that he'd ever had anyone to tell. She pulled away to look up into his face, her eyes betraying her shock.

"Scabior-"

"Nickolas," he corrected her. "My name was Nickolas." The name tasted strange on his lips, it had been so long since he'd said it that he was a stranger to it. He hadn't been Nickolas since he was fifteen.

"Nickolas," she whispered. He felt a pang deep in his chest and his eyes widened in surprise because when _she_ said it he realized that he'd missed it.

Her eyes searched his face for a moment, though what she was looking for he couldn't be certain. She must have found it because she leaned in and kissed him. Her lips were soft and shy against his own and he only hesitated for a moment before his instincts kicked in and he was kissing her back.

He reached up to caress her jaw with gentle, feather-light touches that had her sighing into his mouth. His tongue slid past her lips, moving against hers in a sensual dance, making her groan at the contact. Her hands moved up to tangle in his hair and his cock twitched when her nails scraped against his scalp. He pulled away from her, suddenly remembering that they were standing in the pantry of a fucking homeless-shelter.

"What are we doin', dove?" he asked her breathlessly. She blinked up at him with wide, confused eyes for a moment before shaking her head.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know but I like it, and I don't want to stop."

His heart skipped a beat. Merlin she was turning him into a pussy.

"Yer don't like me," he argued, mostly for the sake of arguing. A large portion of his brain, and his cock, was screaming at him to shut up before he changed her mind.

"I didn't," she agreed, frowning. "But I think, with some persuading, I might change my mind."

"What did yer 'ave in mind?" he asked her, smirking at the thought that it might only take a few good snogs to make her his.

"Spend Christmas with me, at my flat," she said hesitantly, as if she was afraid he might say no.

"Well, if yer insist," he drawled, leaning down to kiss her again. It was a bloody fucking Christmas miracle, and he wondered if maybe fate was finally done fucking him over.


End file.
